The Maze of Shadows
The thing that came through the doorway was a humanoid monster of enormous size, draped from head to toe in what looked like lengths of seaweed.
Standing upright, its head would have brushed the main beam of the ceiling, but it was hunched so deeply that both hands dragged along the floor, allowing it to squeeze through the low doorway with ease.
The draping coverings hid everything but the very tips of its fingers and toes. Beneath them, wrinkled black skin bristled with thick, coarse hair, and long black claws jutted from fingers and toes alike.
Those hands—!
The very hands that had shot out of the shadows and seized Seruhwa by the ankle, dragging her away.
So it was that thing that took my wife.
The Crown Prince gritted his teeth. Every instinct screamed at him to leap down right now, put a blade to that creature's throat, and demand to know where she was.
And that would be a fool's move, when I don't even know how powerful that monster is. Besides, it already knows I'm an Eodukseoni.
While the boy exercised a patience beyond his years, suppressing his fury and his gnawing anxiety, the Geuseundae that had entered the room turned slowly, ponderously, to look at the shattered fragments of the storage chest.
With every step it took, black wisps streamed down from its whole body.
Looking closer, they weren't stalks of seaweed at all — they were pitch-black shadows. Layer upon layer of shadow draped over its frame like feathers, a grotesque sight.
"It's gone... gone? Where did it go? I clearly locked it away in here. This thing was sturdy. It broke out of this? It broke it?"
Muttering in apparent confusion, the Geuseundae pawed through the splintered remains of the chest. When its hands came up empty, its head snapped upward.
"Where did it go? Eodukseoni, where did it go?"
Between the drooping curtains of shadow, the monster's furnace-red eyes blazed. It turned its head this way and that, scanning the room.
"Eodukseoni, human Eodukseoni. Where are you? Where? I'll tear you limb from limb and eat you. Tear you apart and eat you. Pull off your head and crush it, crush it to pulp...!"
The Geuseundae made a low grinding rasp in its throat, eyes flicking restlessly about.
From atop the main beam, the Crown Prince held his breath and watched the giant monster comb through the narrow room.
That monster... it's terrifyingly strong.
Goosebumps raced down his spine, one after another.
The boy had no knowledge that would let him identify the creature. But his body, changed by the Eodukseoni, sensed instinctively just how fearsome it was.
A boy who's only just begun learning the sword has no chance against that.
With an ordinary boy's strength, he wouldn't survive a single blow. But what if he drew on the power of the Eodukseoni instead?
...I don't know.
Cheon Gyeol-woo still had no way of measuring where his limits as an Eodukseoni lay. He hadn't fully mastered it yet — what he could wield was only the tip of the iceberg that was his vast darkness.
Besides, the boy was unaccustomed to combat. The last time he'd attacked anyone at all had been when he caught and interrogated that arsonist.
So fighting that thing now was the worst of all possible plans.
I must not be found.
The boy mingled his own darkness with the surrounding shadows until his whole body was swallowed up. Becoming part of the darkness itself, he crouched low and waited in stillness.
"The Eodukseoni isn't here! The human Eodukseoni!"
Enraged, the Geuseundae began smashing the furnishings in every direction.
Mind you, the "furnishings" amounted to little more than a decrepit old wardrobe and an empty bookshelf, but the pressure radiating from the rampaging monster — enough to make the shadows shrouding its body ripple and thrash — was overwhelming. The narrow room felt as if it were stuffed full of the monster itself.
...Please, just leave. Just go—
The Crown Prince, who had been waiting for the creature to give up and depart, suddenly sucked in a sharp breath.
The Geuseundae was straightening its hunched back — and its shadow-covered head rose steadily toward the main beam.
...!
The boy clamped his free hand — the one not gripping his sword — over his mouth and went rigid, praying that the darkness covering him looked like nothing more than the shadow of a roof rafter.
The monster's eye sockets, glowing red like the firebox of a lit stove, swept slowly across the top of the main beam.
Their eyes met for an instant.
A blood-red eyeball staring straight at him.
Or was it simply looking at the beam itself?
Am I caught?
Cheon Gyeol-woo's sweat-drenched hand tightened on the hilt of the Amryeonggeom.
Should I strike first, even now?
In the instant he hesitated, the monster's huge mouth gaped open like a cliff edge between the layers of hanging shadow, and a horrifying stench rolled over him.
"Not here, it's not here...!"
The creature jerked its head around and lowered its back once more.
"Where did it go? Human Eodukseoni, where did it go? I'll tear it apart, crush its head, pluck out its eyeballs and eat them, devour every last piece!"
Still muttering without pause, the Geuseundae opened the door and shuffled out of the room. The dragging scrape of its feet and its dreadful rambling grew gradually fainter.
He had survived.
Only then did the boy release the breath he'd been holding.
He waited a long while after the sound had fully faded, then dropped down as silently as a cat.
His terrified heart was pounding as though it might burst. The darkness that had fed on his fear churned and swirled around his body — like a beast of prey biding its time for a chance to tear into its own master.
The Crown Prince clutched his chest and took a deep, steadying breath, forcing the terror back down. He wrenched the corners of his mouth upward and summoned the memory of a girl's smile, as sweet and lovely as if he held a piece of candy in his mouth.
One bright fragment among the many memories Seruhwa had made for him.
"If you do that, it feels like you're holding happiness in your mouth."
"So from now on, let's eat lots and lots of delicious things together."
The moment he recalled those sweet memories, the smile he'd forced became a real one. His heart, frozen with fear, gradually steadied, and the darkness that had swelled around him settled obediently at his feet.
...My wife must be imprisoned somewhere in this place too.
The Crown Prince began to walk, a soft smile on his face as though he felt no fear at all.
First I find my wife. Then I work out how to escape this place.
He poked his head through the splintered gap in the broken door and saw a corridor shrouded in shadows like drifting fog.
Cheon Gyeol-woo stepped carefully into the corridor — and the docile shadows at once came surging toward him like vipers whose tails had been stepped on.
"...!"
He raised his darkness by pure reflex. It erupted from beneath his feet like a rising curtain, and the shadows plunged into it like striking serpents.
Then, like droplets flung into the sea, they simply dissolved into the standing wall of darkness and vanished.
What kind of trick is this?
The Crown Prince, knowing little of the Geuseundae's true nature, tilted his head in puzzlement.
In the dark of night, shadows cannot be seen. A moonless dark swallows even shadow itself.
And so an ordinary Eodukseoni and a Geuseundae stood in a perfect hierarchy — no matter how wildly a shadow might thrash, the moment darkness blanketed it, it could do nothing at all.
The boy didn't know that principle, but he understood within moments that the shadows filling the corridor were powerless before his darkness.
In that case...
Wreathing himself in darkness with the Amryeonggeom held forward, the Crown Prince walked the corridor.
Once he had absorbed every shadow that lunged at him a few paces at a time, courage began to build. Soon he broke into a run.
Where is everyone?
His wife — and the Right State Councilor's grandchildren.
As he ran, the boy stirred his ki-sense and spread his darkness outward. That way he could tell whether each room he passed held signs of life without stepping inside.
And it wasn't long before he noticed something strange.
This estate... it's like a maze.
He'd run quite a distance already, yet the straight corridor showed no sign of ending. No matter how large the mansion, he should have reached a corner by now.
Where on earth am I?
Just as the boy, growing alarmed, paused to think — a faint hissing sound came from behind him.
The Crown Prince spun around by reflex, drawing the Amryeonggeom into a guard. His recent sword training had not been wasted; his stance was remarkably steady.
"Who's there!"
At his shout, darkness surged from his feet and swallowed the shadows on every side, clearing his view.
At what the darkness revealed, Cheon Gyeol-woo's mouth fell open in a daze.
An old, weathered corridor — but wide enough for three or four ox-carts to pass abreast.
And filling more than half of it: the head of an enormous serpent.
Across the black-scaled body, clusters of something like crimson crystals hung like ripened fruit. The giant serpent fixed its bloodshot eyes on the Crown Prince and flicked its forked tongue.
Sssss.
"...!"
A shiver shot from his heels to the crown of his head. In the next instant, the boy threw himself to the floor on pure instinct.
CRASH!
The serpent's head slammed down like a bomb exactly where he had been standing. The aged wooden floor burst apart, splinters scattering through the air.
Even a heartbeat slower, and he would have been crushed to death on the spot.
Rolling once and springing back up, the Crown Prince gripped the Amryeonggeom in both hands, gasping for breath. The serpent's head, which had been driven into the corridor floor, slowly rose again.
Irritation flickered in the bloodshot eyes that turned back toward him — as if the creature were displeased that a worthless little human whelp had dodged its strike.
Tsst-tsst-tsst — with a skin-crawling sound, the serpent's scales rose one after another. The red crystals lodged between them flared with deep light, and a fishy, unnatural smell of blood began to seep out.
Venom?
Struck by a vague sense of dread, Cheon Gyeol-woo raised his sleeve to cover his mouth. If that really was poison, a scrap of cloth wouldn't hold it back — but he couldn't simply breathe it in, either.
What manner of place was this, where a serpent yokai of that size roamed corridors drowning in shadow?
In a place this horrifying... was his wife truly safe? Were the Councilor's grandchildren still alive?
And—
Can I survive this thing, right now?
The serpent's head crept toward him, reeking of blood. Its glassy eyes, pooled with red, stared unblinking at the boy.
...Not "can I survive." I will survive. I have to.
If he died in a place like this, it would be a dog's death in the truest sense. And he wouldn't be dying alone — everyone dragged here with him would die as well.
He was the Eodukseoni, the Crown Prince, a husband. Somehow, he had to see this through.
The boy set his back to the wall and raised the Amryeonggeom. Cold sweat had broken out in a sheet along the back of his neck.
"To face something larger and stronger than yourself head-on is a fool's errand."
"Take a powerful strike on your blade's side and deflect it away. Follow the subtle truth of yuneungjegang — the soft overcoming the hard."
Gi Ho-cheol's teachings echoed in his ears.
The boy calmed his ragged breathing according to the breathing sequences of the Gi Spirit Sword style, and stared at the giant serpent without so much as a blink.
The serpent's head drew near, stopped a few paces away, and simply watched him.
Look away, and I die.
The moment a bead of sweat trailing down his temple dropped from the tip of his chin—
"—!"
Cheon Gyeol-woo snapped his head aside, stepped to the right, and shoved the serpent's lunging head away with the flat side of the Amryeonggeom.
WHUMM— The head missed him by a hair's breadth and slammed into the wall beside the Crown Prince's skull, punching through the clay plaster in a spray of earthen dust.
Now!
His arms, which had shoved the monster aside, ached as though they would shatter — but there was no time to stand still.
Pivoting on the spot, the boy brought the Amryeonggeom down on the serpent's neck, still jammed into the wall.
Given the vast difference in size, it was like swinging a sword at a garden wall — but the Crown Prince's blade was no ordinary sword. It was forged from his own hardened darkness.
Longer!
Meaning it could change shape at his will.
As it swung, the Amryeonggeom stretched out long, trailing darkness behind it like a tail, and struck the serpent's neck.